


Fracture

by the_drift



Category: Avengers: Winter Soldier, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bottom Loki (Marvel), Bucky is not a fucken saint, Bucky reads a lot, Loki deals with mortality in the most self destructive ways, M/M, Mentions of Rape, Motorcycles, cigarette kisses, memories of violence, mentions of physical abuse, mmmyes all my jams, neons so many neons, there is poetry involved
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 12:58:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14671584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_drift/pseuds/the_drift
Summary: Loki is banished to Midgard, weak and powerless and it so happens to be around the same time Steve is trying to re-integrate Bucky into ‘normal’ life. Bucky reads to him while Loki is imprisoned in his cell. They talk. They smoke.The nights become muddled as neon lights pass their faces and he seems to see Loki only through a haze of cigarette smoke and a rustle of hair as black as ink. Both their wings flutter in enclosed spaces. Small spaces are safe spaces, he knows. But what he knows, he was told, and that doesn’t necessarily make it true.Canon divergences to the max, idgaf, I am only interested in writing their story.Please read the Notes sections, always.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I want to start by saying that I adore this pairing with the entirety of my entire entirely deep, dark heart. I hate it that it’s an incredibly rare pair. I love them so much.
> 
> Aside from that, I started writing this fic in the evening of an event that left me quite broken, which is the decision to sell my motorcycle, which was the love of my life. Long story short: money. So I was in a melancholy mood hardcore when I started writing this, feeling very much like shit. 
> 
> Fic had been updated three times and at this point I am just gonna leave it as it is, even if it doesn't raise to my standards because I just want to tell this story.
> 
> One of my most favorite things to ponder on is the fact that Bucky has always had the inherent violence of the Winter Soldier dormant inside him, and the conditioning Hydra performed on him only worked at taking that out of him and make it peak performance.  
> I don't like thinking about Bucky as a saint, I never have, I think it denies a lot of the human experience one can toy with when writing a character who went through such a complex story arc. So that's what I was trying to write here, a Bucky who is both Steve's old best friend but also the Soldier.  
> And a Loki who cannot deny him, exactly because of that duality.

 

_“Imagine a story where everything goes wrong,_

_where everyone has their back against the wall,_

_where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die._

_Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need,_

_where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.”_

  
― **Richard Siken**

 

 

 

  The name “ _Bucky”_  only dripped through Loki’s lips once, when Loki had first been able to speak.  
The separation had been instant, as, behind his face that was clearly asking Loki  _who the fuck did he think he was_ , Bucky was also falling one floor down within himself. A door was open and with it came the question again:  _who_ **_the fuck_ ** _is Bucky_ , and the realization had been instant; the fact that Bucky was someone Steve was still looking for, and, deep in the recess of Bucky’s mind, that Bucky was someone he himself had separated from a very long time ago. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

  
  Loki had been brought down from Asgard by Thor himself, handcuffed and looking like he had seen better days, during a sunset that burned the sky.  
Bucky knew of him, from the mouths of all the Avengers, from the videos he had seen, from the stories he’d heard.

Face to face, Loki in the state he’d first seen him, dragged by Thor across the landing strip at the Avengers tower, seemed less regal; but when he threw one curious glance in his direction, unable to recognize him or place his face anywhere in memory, Bucky had seen a flicker of curiosity, the only spark of life on an otherwise empty face.

He’d only watched back then. Half hidden in the shadows of the door and standing behind everyone else, he’d watched the God Thor walk out of the shining lights, pulling Loki after him roughly, but at the same time, almost gently.There was a history there, in that gentle tug that wanted itself to be seen as a hard lesson.

He watched Thor handing Loki over to Tony and Nick Fury, in acknowledgement that he was there on Earth, but also to let them know that he posed no danger. To make show of it, Thor had taken the handcuffs off, and eventually, the face mask he had on and James remembered he’d heard a gasp from Bruce in that moment.

 Loki’s mouth had been sewn shut with something that resembled a golden thread. His blood had seeped into their edges, but they still glowed with an almost unreal shimmer in the orange sunset.

Thor’s shoulders were straight, his jaw strong, but Bucky saw it in his eyes, in the deep creases beneath them, that it pained him to see Loki in that state. He avoided looking at his brother directly even as he took off the mask.

  
“My father assured me he will not pose any threat,” Thor had said “but in order for his punishment to be as severe as it can be, his ability to use his mouth has been taken. The threads will fall off by themselves as his ability to use magic will decrease, to the point where his body will become as mortal as it can without actually dying on the spot. He said...” Thor clenched his jaw for a moment before continuing “He said you are to do what you wish with him, imprison him, torture him if you want, since he has brought such misfortunes upon you, but that he would prefer Loki to be left into the world by himself, without any help.” he said, and pushed Loki in the general direction of everyone watching.

  
Tony was the first one to take a step in Loki’s direction. It was almost cautious, Bucky thought, but the caution was masterfully hidden behind a mask of arrogance “You seem surprisingly, how to say this,” Tony started, faking thinking of a word he already had sitting on the tip of his tongue “ _tame_ .” His eyes searched for Loki's, searched for the moment to tackle them, make him feel like less, make him feel like he lost. 

Loki could not grace him with an answer, but gave him a heavy lidded look that looked more weary than threatening.  
“Loki’s been dealt with in Asgard.” Thor offered, but that was all he would give them. His words held an underlying story to them, something that did not appease his palate to speak of, so he didn’t.

Bucky saw these things, all of them, written in the creases under his eyes, dripping from the tone of his voice. Bucky knew them well.

  
  Thor announced them he would not be returning for a long time, as he had a lot of mending to do in Asgard, and his father would go into Odinsleep soon.  He placed the chain attached to the handcuffs into Tony’s hand, exchanging a glance with him that could have meant anything, or nothing at all, and they stood like that locked in silent understanding for a while that seemed a bit too long for comfort.  
He seemed reluctant to leave Loki, but did a very good job at hiding it, unable to look him in the eye as he did.

When he turned around and walked away, Bucky saw the twitch of his neck, a turn that was almost there, but which Thor could not follow through with, choosing instead to walk into the light and disappear to walk across the Rainbow Bridge, urging himself to forget he ever had a brother.

Bucky did not know Thor very well, he’d only met him once or twice after he had been moved to the Avengers Tower, but from what little he knew, he assumed that what he had done had been due to an immense pressure from his people and his King.

You don’t walk away from someone you hate unable to look them in the eye. Unable to say one word of spite. You don’t just step quietly into the light without giving them at least one last glance.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 Later on that night, Bucky heard Natasha, always the perceptive one, talk to Steve and Tony in the kitchen over a beer, and she was speaking about how worn out Thor looked. The other two agreed.

“I don’t know how the pull Loki has always had over Thor works,” Tony had said “but whatever they’ve done to him in Asgard, Thor had to be a part of. As much of a shit God as Loki is, Thor probably still could not have dealt very well with watching or knowing Loki received whatever punishment they gave him.”

A rattle of bottles, some cupboards being opened. Bucky did not move from where he had placed himself, behind the half closed door “He’ll probably never forgive himself for it. Or he might, I don’t know how Gods work.”  
“He deserves it.” Steve had said, taking a gulp of beer before continuing “The death toll would have kept growing if he wouldn’t have been stopped” The other two agreed.  
Bucky had slipped away from the hallway and did not join in their conversation that night.

Steve seemed to forget that, not too long ago, Bucky himself had kept the death toll rising, through the years. He’d been forgiven, barely, only through the prism of the fact that once, he had been a ‘ _good_ ’ person.

Justice was fickle.

 

 

 He traveled the tower, going down the stairs, taking the emergency exits and the hallways rarely used by its human inhabitants and found himself in the holding cells below the tower, where they were keeping Loki until they figured out what to do with him.

Soon enough he would not need a special cell anymore, but that night that  Bucky first met him alone, Loki was still confined in a cell that had the potential of holding him in if he tried anything. He could not use his voice, but he could use his hands to conjure things, apparently. It was only curiosity that had brought him down there and he watched the God who would soon become human sit down on the cold floor, head down, looking at his hands.

For someone who had wielded so much power and who was, according to what Bucky had heard, hungry for power, to be powerless was to welcome a fate worse than death. It was a fitting punishment, and the God Odin knew it. Bucky did not know this Odin, only from hearsay, but his astute senses told him that to make Loki lose what he had held most prized - his pride, his power, was to make him suffer more than just downright killing him. If only such a God could be killed, Bucky did not really know the makings of celestial beings.

  
 The golden thread shimmered in the electric lights when Loki turned around to see who was watching him through the darkness and he watched with tired interest. Bucky did not say anything, just looked at him as he stood there, barely visible through the shadows of the hallway. 

His vision seemed fractured somehow when looking at him, as if Loki was fraying at the edges.

It was much later that he realized Loki was holding up a glamour spell still, so he would not be seen in his real state.

  
James came to see Loki in his real state a week later, when he was starting to become more and more deprived of his magic and he could not hold on to the spell through sheer power of will. But that night, Bucky only watched, curious to be alone in the presence of a God, even a demolished one such as this.

And then he turned around and left, without a word.

 

  
Then, as the weeks rolled over, he had taken into the habit of coming to see him, every few days, out of boredom, out of curiosity, always standing at the end of the corridor, an immovable figure shrouded in semi darkness. The more he watched him, the more he took in his features, he could understand why people would be swayed by him, even without hearing him speak with that tongue he was so famous for – his features were angled, to the point where they warned of danger, but at the same time, his eyes were warm, even if they were as green as the purest jade; there was something in the fine lines around them that spoke of a softness long forgotten.

That was the impression Bucky got. It did not mean he was right, the man, the God in the cell had killed many people, but then again, _so had Bucky._

  
 These were strange times, for both of them, Bucky thought, as he walked inside the holding cells area, night after night, and looked at him for a while, maybe minutes, maybe more, he was not sure. Strange times when a God was punished to become mortal and an instrument of death was given mercy.

It had been Steve’s mercy, but nonetheless.

 

 Bucky did not like to think about it, about that mercy. As much as he loved Steve (and oh, he had loved him, truly, honestly), his mercy, his kindness, made Bucky sick to his stomach sometimes. It made him sad, it made him ache. _It hurt_. It was revolting. He hated himself for receiving it. It was not only because he thought he did not deserve it, because he thought it was misplaced, but also because one night when they were out on a balcony, he had leaned into Steve, closed his eyes to the warm summer breeze and placed a chaste kiss on his lips.

And Steve had stepped away.

The blow had been dealt like a sucker punch to Bucky’s stomach. He’d thought wrong, and there was no way to take it back now, but he wanted to, desperately, violently. How do you take back time, how do you take back a mistake? He'd been so sure that he was right this time. That, after so many years, decades, it was finally alright to let him know, and they would be alright. Together, as they had always been, but different, as they had always wanted. As Bucky had always wanted.

 _It’s not like that_ , Steve had said, confused, half angry, taking a step backwards, almost stumbling, _it has never been like that._

 _How could it not be,_ Bucky had asked, after everything they went through, after how adamant Steve had been to find him, to get Bucky to come back to him? He asked, and half of those questions remained suspended in the air as the look on Steve's face changed, and kept changing to an alarming degree. How did he take it back? How did he unfuck what he'd just done?

 _Since when?_ Steve had demanded. His mouth was hanging open, lips curled in an expression of both surprise as well as disappointment, anger.

 _Since always,_ Bucky had answered.

 

 And Steve shook his head and he leaned into the balcony rail and held his head in his hands as if he’d lost someone close to him, which in a way, perhaps he had. His best friend, his only connection with a life he’d had before all that mess.

 Bucky did not know how to react. His most basic instinct was to punch Steve in the face, but what was the point in picking a fight with Captain America again, this time for all the wrong reasons? Not that the other reasons had been that just to begin with, but this was more raw, it was more visceral and Bucky wanted to pull his own insides out.

 _We’ll never talk about it. I’m sorry,_ was what he’d said to Steve before he stormed out of the balcony. He did not let Steve catch up to him and he felt like Steve’s efforts to do so had been half-assed anyway.

 

He took it out in the gym, he took it out of his system so hard he managed to bend in one of his metal plates in his arm and had to go to one of Tony’s robots to fix it because it laid there crooked, blocking the way for the other plates to settle in nice and smooth.

 

Steve took off in a mission two days later and he didn’t come around for two weeks. When he did, he acted like nothing had happened, and it took Bucky everything he had not to fight him for it. But during that time there had been a resignation inside him, a mellowness that turned everything dull and grey, because nothing mattered and everything was transcendent.

 

Steve laughed with him still, but stayed an arm’s length away from him on the couch. He did not hate him for who he was - a man who loved another man, no, Steve was not that kind of person, Bucky knew. But he knew Steve resented him for it, for that love, because it had taken away the friendship Steve had always taken for granted. It has taken away an illusion, Bucky supposed, of something Steve had idealized since they were kids.

They stood alone in the kitchen at 2 a.m more than once after that, exchanging glances, each of them ready to speak, lips parted with practiced words but all Bucky eventually got was a faint " _I'm sorry, Buck_ " and Bucky had nodded, left the room and that has been that. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 Bucky had nothing to do, except read. He was not allowed yet to go outside unless in trusted company (Natasha, Clint), as no one had come up with a better idea to take his trigger words out of his head yet. They did not know how they would reintegrate him into the normal world. They did not know how he would even function.

He did not know either. He’d known nothing but war, for decades. He felt empty without conflict. How was he supposed to play pretend at life when he could smell blood on everyone?

  
When he looked outside at the snow covering the city, feeling the tower’s metal and glass walls crowding him in, all he could think of was of his own cryo sleep pod. Or the windowless rooms he had been held in, for various reasons, some bloody, others too psychologically taxing to dwell on for too long. Filled with stories he’d never told anyone and never will.

He was seeing a psychologist two times a week ever since he had been taken in by the Avengers and he was supervised almost at all times. It didn’t mean shit though. The emotional baggage he had with him even in the smallest of his mental suitcases was enough to fill a long stretch of a year or more within the psychologist’s rooms. He would not hide, he owed that to Steve, as bad of a turn as their friendship had taken, and he owed it to the other Avengers too, for trying to trust him, but it did not mean he would tell them everything.

There was no point in digging up certain things. Certain things were better off bound and gagged at the bottom of a deep well.

God, he hated winter. He hated watching the first snowdrops eat up the cities and the parks. He hated the crispness of the air and how static everything seemed. How calm. Empty, void of emotion but overflowing at the brim with sighs.

He loved winter.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 With a copy of a book called “ _Sarinagara_ ” by some guy called Philippe Forest, Bucky had descended into the holding cells area one of those cold January nights, and sat down with his back to the wall, overlooking Loki’s cell, and he continued reading. As always, Loki was laying on the floor, as there was no bed in the room and he had not been given the minimal of comforts, save for the privacy of a toilet behind a fake wall. No mirrors, no toothbrush, just a sink with only cold water. The Geneva Conventions rules did not apply to that enclosed, 4 by 5 meters square semblance of a life.

Bucky was intimately familiar with that very same cell - he had been held up in it for weeks too, until an agreement had been reached in his confronts.

The temperature inside it was at the bare minimum all around the year - just boiling during the summer and close to freezing during winter. Bucky had dropped a few kilograms a year before by just breathing inside it. The strong neon lights were on all around the clock and there were no windows anywhere. You could not tell time by anything.

Tony Stark had done his best to make whoever stayed in it as uncomfortable as he could without applying hands-on torture.

 

 That time Loki was not leaning with his back to the wall, instead he was just laying on the floor, looking at the ceiling, hands draped loosely over his stomach.  
His clothes had been taken away and he’d been given a black long sleeve blouse, black pants and sneakers.With his dark,dark hair sprawled across the white floor like small snakes in repose, wearing all black, his pale skin and much too green eyes stood out on the backdrop of the sick neon light almost startlingly. His lips were pale too. His food rations were liquid, to be taken through a thin enough straw that fitted between his swen shut lips. He did not seem to want to eat them anyway - his tray was still mostly untouched, except for the water.

Bucky knew he shouldn’t have, but he was there, on that cold evening, with his book and with Loki turning his head towards him curiously, cautiously.  
They did not know each other, so there was not yet any blame to be cast, except for the faraway one, which Bucky had heard from the mouths of others; and Loki… well, Loki perhaps had not even heard of his existence to begin with. Regardless.

  
Bucky assumed he’d felt some sort of kinship. Or maybe it was just some good, old pity. The God must have hated that word, the very feeling in itself; if he was a God, he was bound to be proud too, right?  
Bucky didn’t give a shit.  
Bucky was stuck in a building with people who did not know him and one person who knew him too well, or perhaps still, not well enough. Being around everyone else was taxing; he made great efforts to try to keep an air of normality, of  _trying_.

But most of the times he just wanted to _run._

  
But also, he wanted the company.  
He’d figured a voiceless prisoner would do.  
He figured he was probably miserable.  
He figured he was suffering too, in his own way, if Gods even knew the meaning of suffering.  
He figured it didn’t matter, so fuck it. He was going up the walls in his room. He could not converse with JARVIS, it made his skin crawl to talk into the ether. The corridor was giving him at least a sense of space.

 Loki had watched him for the entire duration of three pages, Bucky saw it on the edges of his vision, but he kept reading and ignoring him. Eventually, Loki ignored him in return, watching the neons on the ceiling of his cell.  
When Bucky had finished reading one chapter, he’d gotten up and left without a word.

He returned the next night. Both him and Loki had given each other the same treatment and it had kept going like that for a while, night after night, a silent, unusual companionship.

Bucky had seen him look worse and worse with each passing day, cheeks sinking in, eyes losing their glow, just like the golden threads seemed to wither away to a darker brown color. When Bucky was looking in the mirror, pulling his hair in a ponytail, he did not look any better. The tower was suffocating.

Even in January, a January that was colder than any January had been since 1926, the news said, he went out on the balcony, just to breathe the outside air, to watch the city go about its life, a life he was not allowed to touch, because he had to be a good boy and wait and try to be normal.

The Avengers limited their comings and goings to coffee shops and bookstores and art museums and walks through familiar places, but never out of their sight, never. He cared for them in a way you care for people who are trying to help you and he cared for Steve, he cared for Steve because Steve had cared for him enough to carry him out of the pits of Hydra.

He persisted in trying to get the ‘ _Bucky, Buck, pal_ ’ out of him in spite of what had transpired a year before on the balcony and Bucky didn’t have enough heart in him to tell him ‘ _Bucky, Buck, pal_ ’ was gone.

 

* * *

 

 

  
  The Avengers had decided to keep Loki in until the threads would fall off and, after hours of debate, they decided also Loki would be kept under lock and key under the same conditions, for a while longer, as his body became more human, until he would definitely not pose a threat to anyone again.

 _A while longer, just enough to fracture the edges of his newfound humanity_ , Bucky thought, but did not offer to the conversation.

Then they would release him into the world, keep track of him but he would not be given any help at all.  
“Give him at least 200 dollars.” Bruce had offered, reluctantly, and Tony had given him a reproachful look “Fine, make him clean the floors for it, if it would make you feel better, or if it seems more fair to you.” Bruce shrugged “I just..” he did not continue.

Buckly heard it all and did not participate.

  
But he did visit Loki almost every night and read a few pages from ‘ _Sarinagara_ ’, or an entire chapter, before leaving without another word. Loki watched him read sometimes, before watching the ceiling again or absently playing with his fingers. His shoulders had become less straight, his entire posture slouched. Bucky noticed, but said nothing to anyone.

 It was at the end of January that he realized Loki looked different and he posed a question absently to Bruce the next morning over breakfast. Bruce was the one who had taken to him the easiest, the one who was wholeheartedly willing to give him a chance, and Bucky was grateful to have his company in the mornings, as he was the only person he could suffer through breakfast with without stifling the need to tell them to just keep quiet for a while.

He found out from Bruce about Loki’s glamour spell. It made sense that suddenly Loki’s hair was longer, and fell down in waves, and that his left eye was bloodshot as if it had been through a serious internal trauma.  
The wounds from where the needles had gone through his lips were worse, and his neck bore marks of strangulation, but Bucky could not tell due to his long hair if there had been hands at his throat or ropes or something much worse.

Even the back of his hands and fingers looked like they were healing from serious bruising. He probably looked much, much worse when Thor had brought him to the Avengers, but his glamour spell had held on long enough for him to heal just a bit and regain the semblance of a face that had not been thoroughly traumatized.

Bucky had seen the many things that could have caused Loki's marks (he was sure the Gods were even more inventive in the ways of torture), he'd inflicted some similar marks on the people he himself had killed. The bruises, the scars, all those signs of mutilation, they tugged at a chord deep inside Bucky, a chord tied to a key, a key to a room inside him that felt a lot like a home. It was dark and it smelled stale and like iron, but it was home nonetheless. 

  
   As Bucky was taking in the damage that night as January was inching closer to February, Loki felt himself being watched and raised his eyes. They had lost their shine, the color having settled into a murky green, the color of swamps and deep forests.  
The lines on the edges of Loki’s eyes were deeper. He looked disarmingly human.

  
Bucky held his gaze for a few moments, before he sat down, as if Loki’s face was not painting a picture of torture, as if he did not look like there were things fracturing inside him. Not bones or muscle, but the other kind of fractures, the ones that take years to pull back together. Or perhaps there wasn’t any fracture. Perhaps he was just filled with rage, waiting to find a way to obliterate them all.

Bucky had never met a God, he wouldn’t know.  
  
There was a cold current through the corridor, and he pulled the zipper of his jacket up. Loki was wearing the same clothes, and if he was bothered by the cold, you couldn’t tell, unless the fact he had rolled his sleeves over his fingers was any indication. His pride kept his back as straight as he could, and his shivering to a minimum. But Bucky had been the tortured. He knew.  
The threads sewed through Loki's lips were the color of copper.

It was a cold night, later than usual and Bucky had been unable to fall asleep. He’d been haunted by what if’s and could have been’s that evening, and they were not getting any kinder with him as the night wore on.

He had not slept well the entire week. Just watched the snow fall beyond the glass wall of his room.

  
“Chapter 30.” Bucky opened his mouth, speaking loud enough for his voice to echo throughout the corridor. It made Loki jerk his head upwards, eyes interested and alert. But Bucky did not look up from the book. “What does poetry speak of? It speaks of the perpetual disaster of time, the destruction of life that is only survived by the infinite desire. Faced with the great law of nothing that towers over the entire world, the fake wisdom of men urges towards submission. In exchange for resignation, she promises peace and forgetfulness.”

  
He made a long pause, assessing the situation without taking his eyes off the page, and when Loki did not move, but merely watched him, he continued reading the seemingly unrelated stories that brought together the life story of Issa Kobayashi. Perhaps it was not of interest to Loki, it was not to Bucky, but the book fell in and out of stories to pause between them with thoughts half formed about a life left unfinished somewhere between the lines, and in those gaps between stories, Bucky found a comfort.

  
He’d closed the book after reading two chapters slowly, deliberately, and left without a word, without looking at Loki, as he always did.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 He returned every day for the next week, and read for an hour, finishing ‘ _Sarinagara_ ’ with an even tone.  
Every time he returned, Loki was closer to the corridor, but never too close, just enough to listen in well. He never made any motions. Sometimes he played with his fingers, or turned his head to watch him read, then looked back up at the ceiling or in some imaginary spot, but nothing else. Bucky did not offer anything more. He came in, sat down, opened the book and started reading. It was enough for him.

 

   When he finished ‘ _Sarinagara’_ , he spent a long time with Natasha in a bookshop in Queens, going through the books, trying to figure out what to get next. Usually he picked some fiction to keep his mind occupied, but he’d went in there with every intention to get something he could read to a man who could not speak, had nothing to listen to, and saw no one except for Bucky and the robot who brought him his liquid food he had to eat with a straw and which he almost always left unfinished.

  
“Bucky, seriously, we’ve been here for over half an hour.” Natasha had said. She was trying not to sound irritated. Bucky ignored her.”It won’t be an issue to buy a Kindle, you know. You can stock hundreds of books inside it.” she offered, more gently, guilt covering her irritation.  
“I like to turn the pages.” Bucky offered in an even tone as he checked out another book. His metal hand was gloved and it was difficult for him to flip through and check the content of the first pages. ‘ _The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’_  seemed like a gigantic effort of patience, so he put it down, moving away from the historical section.

  
A group of women at the other end of the shelf was staring. Most of them were whispering, the others looked a bit intimidated. Natasha knew where it was going, a baseball cap on Bucky’s head and a blonde wig on her was not a disguise.  
“Come on, I don’t think we can deal with this today.” She’d said, gently pushing Bucky in the direction of the cashier, grabbing three books she’d seen Bucky be interested in and assumed he might have wanted.

  
A space opera by Alastair Reynolds was one, another one was an unauthorized biography of Putin, which Bucky had subsequently thrown in the trash, and the other was a thin volume of poetry titled ‘ _Crush_ ’. Bucky had only looked at the poetry volume because the cover was so brutal – a hand wiping what looked like a bloody mouth, and he liked the way the author’s name sounded on his lips: Siken, Richard Siken. There was an underlying violence beneath that name, somehow.

  
He didn’t have much of a choice that night, as he sat down on the corridor, facing Loki’s cell. He was sitting cross legged on the floor, his hair behind his left ear and he was fiddling with a loose thread that had come off from his sleeve. He did not acknowledge Bucky when he walked in, but his body seemed to calm down, paying attention, searching for his voice.

  
Bucky sat down with the book, flipping through the pages, reading a phrase here, one there, in silence. It was not what he had expected, and he was not sure if this was the most appropriate thing to read out loud. He kept flipping through the pages, as he felt Loki’s curiosity in regards to his silence had been piqued.

The poems did not rhyme, and it took him a moment to realize that poetry had changed too, since the 40’s. This was something else, a poetry that flowed differently, he thought, as he noticed how the words were scattered across the page, sometimes in long sentences, other times in short bursts of words, and slowly, he figured he found a rhythm of sorts. Yes, that must have been how you read it, more like a performer.

  
Satisfied with that, he turned the pages, skimming through them.

This was poetry to be read in silence, was the conclusion he'd reached.

Well. _Alright_.  
He closed the book, then opened it again, at a random page and, without looking at it, he started reading, word by word, slowly. And it was a long one, speaking of unforgivable things and of the kind of love that hurts in more ways than one, and it made him uncomfortable, and the words knotted painful things in his stomach, but he kept reading regardless, keeping his tone evenly paced.  
“When I say this, it should mean laughter, not poison.  
Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you. Quit miling around the yard and come inside.”

It was how the poem had ended. James felt gutted in its afterglow. He shut the book and walked out as if he was in a hurry.

The next night he brought in “ _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea_ ”.  
He also brought a blanket with him and placed it between the bars. Loki did not touch it while he was there, but he had it around him every time James came down with his book.

  
When he watched the camera feeds through the day, the blanket was nowhere to be seen. Tony would have ordered it to be taken away.

Loki knew that. Bucky did too.

 

* * *

 

 

 

  It was somewhere at the end of February, on a night when it had stopped snowing and everything was freezing over that Bucky went down to the holding cells with the first volume of ‘ _Shantaram_ ’ under his arm. He found Loki cross legged, with the blanket over his legs, looking cold regardless. February had not been any kinder than January and by then, Loki’s body was losing its abilities one by one. Jotun blood or not, he was turning human, though his wounds and bruises, from what Bucky had seen, had healed, at least in the beginning, much faster than normal.

  
He was getting ready to sit down in his usual spot when Loki looked up at him, threads that had turned from copper to dark brown tangled between his fingers.  
“What is your name?” was the first thing he asked. His voice was like sandpaper. The holes through which the thread had been sewn were scattered above his upper lip and his bottom one in dark brown dots. Loki must have pulled at them so that the skin wouldn’t have healed to the point where it would have been too painful to pull them out.

Some of them were oozing blood regardless, so the thread must have come off just a while before Bucky had come in. A hole in the corner of his upper lip was glistening with a fat, red droplet that was undecided between to falling down or not.

  
He tried not to let his passing horror show on his face. He’d seen worse things, really, so he chose to sit down in his usual place.  
“James. James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky.” he offered.  
“Which one is it?”  
“They insist on calling me Bucky.”  
“Horrendous. I will call you James.”  
James gave him that fleeting look of  _who the fuck do you think you are_ , while at the same time feeling like he had been given a new baptism. It was not like Loki had magically opened the floodgates, but to hear it from someone else, a flat out refusal to use his nickname, had turned a key, which opened a door, through which he walked calmly.  It was all quite quiet in there. His thumb rubbed the cover of Shantaram as his mind dwelled momentarily into that new place. 

He found himself in a new room of his mind. It was empty, but it was _his own_.

**His name was James.**

Loki spoke before James could open his mouth to talk back:  
“Do you know who I am, James?”  
“Heard it through the grapevine.” He said, but Loki did not answer, so he gave him an easier one “Yes, I know who you are.”  
“And who are you?”  
“I am Buc- James.”  
“No, no. I mean...” Loki let out a short, dry cough before he continued “I mean in this context.” He opened his arms wide, as if to encompass the entire Avengers tower. “In this  _avenging_  context.”  
James did not answer immediately, taking Loki's face in. The difference between the God and the mortal he was becoming was obvious, even to him.

The marble glow of his skin had faded, the lines on his face more clear, his hair no longer a mass of matte darkness but having gained a shimmer normal, human hair had. From an ambiguous looking face, he actually looked like he had years on it, more or less the same age James was. Loki seemed more… _finite_. In that startling realization about the transience of a God, James found Loki beautiful. Somehow more beautiful than he was when he'd been brought in, glamour spell and all.

  James told him.  
Just like that, he opened his mouth and told him who he was, in a nutshell, in an exposition that took him under five minutes, glazing over most details, though some of them were to be read between the lines.  
“Oh.” Was the only reply Loki graced him with. He could not read surprise on his face, but he did read interest. “An enemy has become a friend.”  
“Technically, I was a friend first, before I was the enemy.” James said, putting his chin on the arms he had crossed over his knees. He felt… nothing much in regards to Loki, he was human now, so there was no reason to fear him. All he did feel was a sadness akin to pity in his regards.  
“Did they send you here to me?”  
“No. I came by myself. No one knows I do and if they do, then they don’t care, I suppose, since no one has told me to stop.”

  
Loki had assumed a straight position as he stood there on the floor and his eyes were weighing thing, options, questions “Why _did_ you come down here?”  
“Because I felt like it.”  
“That is hardly an answer.” Loki said, faking dissatisfaction and putting his palms upwards, the threads falling loosely through his fingers. He seemed to be struggling to speak with the holes in his lips, suddenly aware that he had to use them to articulate his words properly. They probably hurt.

  
“You are hardly in a position to ask.” he went on the defensive immediately.  
Loki took a deep breath and swallowed a sigh.  
“That is true. My apologies.”  
Then there was silence, in which James avoided looking at Loki and Loki did the exact opposite. But he did not let him have the upper hand, so he took the lead:  “You might be here for a long time.”  
Loki's tone was even “I am aware.”  
“Don’t try to escape. It’s not worth it.”  
“Why do you care about my well being?”  
_“I don’t_.”  
“Then why are you here?”  
“I find the company upstairs exhausting, and you were quiet.”

  
Loki looked at him without saying anything, eyes narrowing just a bit, bearing just the slightest semblance to those of a cat, before he let out a strangled laugh, which turned into a mild cough, before it returned to a laugh that died out by itself. The corners of James’ mouth twitched just a bit, but he didn’t follow through with the smile.  
“By all means...” Loki said, offering a hand in James’ direction. “What do we have on the menu tonight? Or will you not read to me anymore, now that I can talk?”  
“I should tell Tony the threads have come off.” he said, but didn’t move.  
“Or do that, yes.”  
James weighed the options only briefly and not at all seriously, before his back hit the wall behind him, and he opened the book.  
“It’s about a guy who lived in India for a while, got involved with all sorts of people. Seen some shit.” James offered a summary as he skipped the Author’s Note and went in directly to the first chapter.

  
Loki leaned back into the wall in his cell as well, the back of his head resting against it uncomfortably, his hair cascading over his shoulders in curls. The beauty of this Loki, James thought, seemed to lay in all his sharp angles. The hungrier, more broken down he looked, the more beautiful he seemed to become.

Loki’s mouth almost raised in a smirk as he watched James turn over the pages.  
“I’m always very interested in people who have   _seen some shit."_  
James grinned without taking his eyes off the page and started reading.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

   

 So they talked.  
James came down every evening with the first volume of ‘ _Shantaram’_  under his arm and he read a chapter or so, or sometimes just two pages, before Loki interjected and the exchange of replies turned into a discussion. They talked about nothing at all and about everything else.

“Does it feel different for you now? To have a human body?” he’d asked one night.  
“It’s none of your concern, James.”  
“How is that shift possible though?”  
“Oh James...” Loki let out a defeated laugh “The mighty Allfather has his ways. But still...” he grinned and moved his fingertips before his eyes, and threads of gold shimmered between them before they disappeared into thin air. “Don’t worry, it’s just an illusion. It’s all I’ve got left.”  
“Why did you not remove the golden thread so you can escape with magic?”  
“It’s not just any thread.” Loki said, pushing himself into his hand and getting up. He seemed dizzy for a moment, but regained his balance immediately. He started to pace the room, hands clasped behind his back, at an even pace.

It was the first time he’d made so much movement around James since he’d started to come to the holding cells.”No, no, James… it’s a very special thread, of very specific directions for use. It’s forged in a different place in the Nine Realms, by dwarves who chant when they make them and the chants become bond. There are no ways around them. It takes years to forge them, and they are only gracefully handed to very special people such as myself.” he gave James a grin, as he looked half over his shoulder at him, but it looked sad and resentful.  
“Who sewed your mouth?”  
Loki’s eyes narrowed, the grin disappearing. He turned his face away from James, with a slight jerk of his head, in an attempt to push away a stray, wavy lock of hair.

  
“Thor did.” he said. James only gave him a soft grunt in acknowledgement, encouraging him to continue but Loki did not, at least not immediately. He just about reached with his hand to his mouth to touch it, but dropped his fingers from it halfway there. “It was his punishment, you see. For forgiving me, time and time again, and bringing terror upon both worlds because of me, because of his forgiveness… and all that.” he said, trying to make light of it.  
“It must have been hard, for both of you, since you grew up as brothers.”  
“Don’t pity me, James, I don’t need it. And Thor will get over it, as he does. I watched him say he wouldn’t do it, but giving in nonetheless. He always gives in. He is to be King. He will do anything.”  
“As you would have done too.”

  
Loki took a deep breath, and his shoulders dropped just a bit, but he looked James in the eye regardless, a ghost of a smile hovering above his mutilated lips:  
“As I would have done too...” he gave him a light wave after that “Please, continue and tell me what our friend found out about this lady of his who was never his own to begin with.”  
James took the hint and opened the book again, his finger going across the page until he found the passage they had stopped at.

  
  And James kept his mouth shut.

  
Everyone else found out that Loki had regained his voice only days later, when a loud scream had echoed beyond the security cameras, followed by sounds of broken things.

He was eating breakfast with Steve, Natasha and Bruce when they heard it.  
“JARVIS, noise?” Natasha asked, getting up from her chair.  
“Loki Laufeyson. Holding cells.” Came the voice from everywhere. James was still getting used to it, he was uncomfortable with its omnipresence.  
“Show me.” she demanded, and instantly, holographic feeds from the holding cells cameras appeared to her left.  
Loki was yelling, the panel to the toilet broken in pieces, blood on the walls, traced as if with fingertips.  
“What the hell is he doing…?” Steve muttered, but Natasha was already at the door and James followed her first before Steve and Bruce.

  
  Down the stairs they went and into the holding cells area. Loki’s mouth was slightly bloody as well. James knew the thread had been off since a while ago, but he seemed to have scratched at the wounds that were trying to heal in the absence of the friction offered by the thread. He looked horrible, his face a mask of insanity as he grabbed the bars and shook them as hard as he could before releasing a loud wail that chilled James to the bone.

  
It seemed to have had the same effect on everyone else, because they had stopped dead in their tracks, looking at each other, unsure of what to do.  
“JARVIS, sedate him.” Steve ordered, and JARVIS sent the instructions over to the nearest robot.  
Natasha glanced at Steve “You think it’s going to work?”   
“He’s human now, if the thread’s fallen off, isn’t he?” Steve said, but without sounding too convinced himself.  
James’ eyes followed the cell, the broken plexiglas door, the blood streaks on the wall. Loki had cut his hand while snapping the door apart, and apparently attempting to pull at any piece of metal that might have offered him a chance to get out. None of them was going to risk it, even with Thor's word that the threads would have taken all the magic out of Loki. 

The transformation was now complete, James thought. Loki was human, and the process reaching its end had been too much for Loki who, perhaps, had expected something to happen, for him to be called back, to find a way to stay as he had always been.  
It seemed like neither Odin or Thor were willing to give him any forgiveness anymore.

  
He had killed over 80 people with that stick in his hands, clouding his mind and hanging on to the most ardent desire he had: to rule  
And James thought, as he watched one of the robots open the cell door to administer the sedative, that he himself, had killed maybe  _even more_.

But somehow, because he was James Buchanan Barnes, Steve's best friend, he got a free ticket to re-integration, instead of being branded a murderer and packed in a cell for the rest of his miserable life.

  He was by the door before he even realized what he was doing, and he shoved the robot out of his way with his metal arm, only half certain of the fact its protocols would not allow it to hurt him.  
“Bucky, hey! Buck!” Steve yelled after him and followed, attempting to drag him back and away. James pulled his arm away from Steve’s grasp, more violently than he had intended, leaving a bewildered Steve to stare at him from the cell door.

  
Natasha put her hand on Steve’s shoulder, gently pulling him back, as if she knew something he didn’t.  
James ran a hand through his hair, getting it out of his face as he approached Loki, who was still holding on to the bars, breathing erratically. He didn’t do it with caution, which he should have, for Loki lashed at him instantly, his nails scratching his face. James reacted to the movement before he reacted to the pain, grabbing Loki’s arm and kicking the back of his knees, bringing him into submission before twisting his arm, not enough to break it, but enough to cause pain and earn a yell out of him.

That had been enough to calm him down some. It was one of his very first pains in a human body, and James could only imagine how it felt, after having lived hundreds of years as a powerful God who never bled and always healed almost instantly.  
It was Loki’s palm that was bleeding, he noticed.

  
  He sat down on the floor next to him, the same way he’d sat down so many nights before on the wall just a few meters away, casually, one arm draped over his knee. His metal hand touched Loki’s shoulder.  
“It’s done now, Loki. Your body knows limits now. This body cannot escape this room.” he told him in the same even tone he’d read ‘ _Sarinagara_ ’ to him.  
Loki’s lips tightened, his jaw clenched. He searched the empty floor with his green eyes before he looked up at James. His glance still held on to a threat, a danger deeply embedded in his character, but James held his gaze regardless. Loki’s eyes insisted but neither of the broke apart and a silent truce was agreed upon between them in that moment. Loki let out an amused huff, partially tinged with frustration.

  
“Help me up, James.” he asked and James obeyed, holding Loki by the forearms, under the wide eyed gaze of the three Avengers on the other side of the bars.  
Loki’s blood stained the metal of James’ arm, leaving behind a red trail. Loki’s other hand felt cold on the skin of his exposed forearm.  
When he found his balance, Loki let go of James, looking at Steve, Natasha and Bruce. His face had changed in the short moment it took to turn from James to them, as he ran a hand through his long hair, pulling it away from his eyes, the corners of his lips twitching in an expression of disgust in their general direction.

  
“So, Avengers. I am now officially a mortal, it seems...” he said, turning his bleeding palm towards them, then allowing it to drop back to his side “I am at your mercy. What do you pieces of shit intend to do to me now?” he asked.

It took both Natasha and James to pull Steve off Loki that morning.  
Loki was left with a bleeding nose, a fractured jaw and a purple bruise on his cheek, accompanied by broken skin, that took a long time to heal.

Loki had kept scratching at it. He kept pulling at the needle holes above his lips.  
Every time James looked at the cameras, Loki’s face was bleeding.

 

* * *

 

  
  
  The fighting at the meeting table an hour after the entire mess had been incessant, everyone offering punishment for Loki in different forms and everyone else not agreeing with the degree of said punishing.  
Tony and Steve had a yelling match that had yet to be rivaled by anyone else, about his behavior the day they discovered Loki could talk again. No one won the discussion, but a table had been flipped and a chair was thrown across the room.

  
James and Bruce took Steve out of the room and did not answer their questions as to why he did what he did in the cell.  
“How did he know your name?” Steve demanded.  
“I told him.”  
Bruce looked at him over the rim of his glasses, a pleading look in his eyes “Why?”  
“Because I _felt_ like it.”  
“You’re not making any sense, Buck! What is going on? Speak to me, please!”  
“I have nothing to say, Steve.” was all James offered, and Steve tried to catch his eyes, hoping he would find something in them that would make more sense than his hollow words, but when he didn't, he stormed out of the room, shaking his head in disappointment. Bruce let out a sigh, taking off his glasses, fiddling with them between his fingers. He almost reached out a hand to touch James’s shoulder, or so it seemed, but he let it drop by his side.

On the other side of the glass doors, Natasha was talking Tony down from his outburst. The incessant chattering and accusations did not stop until James walked inside and spoke, barely above their level:  
“Just let him go.”  
“Come again?” Tony raised his eyebrows, leaning into his arms on the table.  
“The acknowledgement that he is now human and wields no power at all is already destroying him. If he would have the courage, he would have probably killed himself by now, but he doesn’t. He is too much of a coward to face his own mortality like that."  
“This,” Tony encompassed the entire room with his hand “is not something you were given a word in, Barnes.”

  
“Listen to him for a moment, Tony...” Bruce pleaded, as he walked inside and sat down, fiddling with his glasses.  
Tony turned sharply towards Bruce, and gave him a frustrated sigh “Bruce, that piece of trash is not getting out of that cell any time soon. If I forget all about him and he rots in there, it would still be too soon.”  
“Put him outside in the world, Tony.” James asked again, his tone not changing volume, or pace “The world is going to eat him up just as much and just as fast. He has no skills to survive as a mortal.”  
“He is more cunning than you give him credit for.” Natasha said, but cautiously, without a trace of malice, signaling that she was not, in reality, taking any sides.  
“So?” James shrugged “Let him be cunning. He ends up in prison, surrounded by hardened criminals. They’ll chew him up just as well. He’s already done for, Tony.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

  All those things, James remembered now, as he stood on the edge of a dirty pool in a seedy motel outside town, the neon logo shifting colors from red to blue, across both their faces. Sometimes the memories of those months of January and February seemed miles away, in another life, other times they seemed as vivid as just hours before.

  
  Loki was sitting in a dirty chaise lounge, legs stretched out on it, ankles crossed, watching the lights shift across the water. Absently, he drowned a gulp of beer now and then. His black hair was so much longer now, and he pulled it in a bun most of the times, loose and messy, on the back of his head. He was wearing one of James’ t-shirts and some thrifted jeans that did not fit him very well.

He’d lost a lot of weight recently.   
One of the needle holes, above his upper lip, close to the corner, had never fully healed, because Loki had kept pulling at the scabs. A nervous gesture he’d done for a long time, which had left him with a mark that could have been mistaken for a mole, if you didn’t look closely. Steve’s punch on his cheekbone had also left a scar.  
Loki’s finger had tugged at those scabs too, incessantly.

 Loki had been torn at the seams when he’d been shoved out of the Avengers tower, in the same clothes he had been kept in his cell with, and after so many months, he seemed only slightly better.   
“How is the job?” James asked, opening another beer.   
Loki laughed a hollow laugh.  
“You can see yourself out if you want me to talk about this.”  
“What can I ask you about then? You hardly want to tell me anything.”  
“There’s nothing to say, James. I live a shit life in a weak body. If I had it in me, I would have ended my life a long time ago, but unfortunately for the both of us, I seem to want to go on living, in spite of it all.”  
“The miracle of human life.” James shrugged, allowing the cold beer to clear his throat. It was August, and the heat was horrendous.

  
  It had been James who had put 200 dollars in Loki’s pockets before he left the tower. How Loki managed to secure himself a room in a motel and a job in the reception of another motel just a mile away, all within the week, James did not know, but in spite of the way his entire reality had splintered around him, he seemed hellbent to make it through the splinters, as much as they were causing him to bleed.

  
And oh, Loki _bled._  
James saw it in the slouch of his shoulders and the circles under his eyes. How heavy the burden of the human life was, to someone who once was gold, and silver and jade. To someone who had seen many dimensions and watched stars die and the shimmers of the Bifrost. He must have felt incredibly small, suffocated almost, in the new confines of his mortal body.

  
“How does a God learn to keep his mouth shut and take orders in a motel, though?”   
“I got fired from the first job I had, actually. Talked back.”  
“I want to say I am surprised.”  
“We’ll see how long I last in this other one.”  
“You could try and get an education. You could still climb up.”  
“Don’t make me laugh, James… and let’s not talk about this anymore, it bores me and I hate it.”  
James just nodded, watching him in the corner of his eye.   
He watched him take out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He watched the lighter flicker life into his sharp features for a moment, and the thick smoke escape from between his lips.   
Loki had discovered the sad joy of cigarettes a few days after staying in the motel and James had not seen him without one since.   
These were small mercies in an otherwise bleak world: a cigarette, a cold beer. Perhaps a strong glass of spiced rum. 

  
James _got it_.   
He got it even if he didn’t  _really_  get it. He’d never been a God, so he could not fathom the decay of the mortal body like Loki probably did. And it was not a mystery to James that Loki was just digging his own grave, spending his time in a low end job with people who could not even think to ascend the heights of his mind. He could have done more for himself, James was sure, but Loki seemed to stubbornly deny himself that luxury – of  _trying._

  
If it was self punishment or just resignation, that, James could not tell.   
Loki was a closed book and James could only glimpse shimmers of him when the wind brushed through its pages, but that was it.

  Loki watched the neon for a moment, as a warm breeze brushed past his face, twisting a stray lock of hair across his forehead, before he stretched his arm towards James, offering him his pack. James took a cigarette out and lit one, inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs.

Heavy cigarettes, with a high nicotine content. Red and white pack: _Marlboro_. He tossed it back to Loki and leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees. James had been impossible to handle after Loki had been thrown out, to the point where Tony had suggested he took a cell himself. James slammed doors and tables, demanding he be left out. To breathe, to walk, drink a fucking coffee without being held in a leash. 

  
Fury had been adamant about it, but so had James. The discussions were endless, with Steve tracking James down through the night, alongside a handful or Tony’s robots, when he jumped ship at 2 a.m so he could have a walk alone. He could have died. They could have gunned him down.

 _No_.

James was sure he could have taken them all down, if he had to. He could take Steve down without his shield too, he _knew_ he could. All he needed to achieve that was to get back into the Soldier mindset. And that, that was frighteningly easy to slip back into. He sometimes did it, late, late at night when he was alone, just for a moment. It was a room in his mind he was well too familiar with. He knew every corner of it, every crack in the wall.  It was as silent as a Siberian forest in January. It was _a home_.

 

 They hated him for discovering he'd been around Loki for two months without telling anyone, and he was accused of a good deal many things he did not even think of to begin with. Things were broken and fights were barely averted. _Barely_. Their fragile trust in him was shattered and he did not find it in himself to tell them he went to Loki because he pitied him. Because he felt bad for him. Because he'd felt like Loki felt once, and there was no kindness in his gesture, but a kinship of sorts. He couldn't explain it all to them, they would not understand. 

Bucky wanted out. Out of the tower, out of their world, out of the entire avenging thing that pressured him into playing to be a good person. Playing the victim, allowing himself to be nurtured like a recovering sick child from an illness that will always be a part of him, like a virus, an infection, in a way they would never be able to understand. The depths it burrowed. How hot it burned. 

  
Eventually, they reached an agreement, and shoved a tracker under his skin. It was not ideal that everyone would know that almost every single time he was out, James would come to visit Loki, but at the end of the day, he didn’t owe any explanations to anyone.   
He was _trying._

  Loki’s magnetism was something James could not explain. He had no powers anymore, hence no way of keeping James around him without the use of magic but James gravitated in his direction easily.   
He felt easy with him around. Loki would tell him to fuck off numerous times and James would not, presently, fuck off, and just stay where he was, and their strange relationship would continue as if nothing had happened. 

  
Loki never knew when James would appear at his doorstep, but every time he did, he never turned him away. Without a word, they fell in together and shared a beer or two. James sometimes came around with a book. He didn’t read to him, but left it on the night stand or the balcony, and the small pile of books kept growing next to Loki’s bed, every few visits.

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

_“A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river_

_but then he’s still left with the river._

_A man takes his sadness and throws it away_

_but then he’s still left with his hands.”_

  
― **Richard Siken** , _Crush_

 

 

 

 

 

  James had found an old motorcycle in a trash yard, in one of his night time wanderings. He was walking past it and saw the bike laying on its side. He went right in, cutting through the fence, and pulled it out with his metal arm and pushed it all the way to Loki’s motel. There was an empty parking space where his room was, and he left it there overnight, with a note that said simply:

_Bike is mine. Will fix it._

 

 Loki read the unsigned note stuck to his door later that morning when he left for work and scrunched his nose at the rusty pile of metal standing in front of his door.  
The words: _what a piece of shit,_  might have escaped his mouth.

 He let it slide and when James appeared at his door with some tools during the weekend, Loki eventually joined him, sitting on the edge of the walkway that connected the motel rooms. He got them both vending machine coffee that tasted like liquid cardboard and James saw him in the corner of his eye pushing back his black locks from his face as the August sun was warming up the late morning.

  
He liked to watch him, but never obviously, always just on the edges of his vision. Glimpses of his thin arms as they slithered out from beneath the black t-shirt, a hint of his pointy knees beneath the black jeans. Black, so much black, as if Loki was mourning for the death of the God he had once been.    
It suited him.

James had given him some jeans, a tshirt and two sweaters when he’d left, alongside the 200 dollars, and he’d seen them in the motel wardrobe still, a pinch of grey and dark, dark red in the midst of all the black clothes Loki had managed to purchase for himself. Everything thrift shopped, Loki had told him. He seemed to be taking a great deal of self deprecating pleasure in admitting his low-income living conditions. He barely made enough to live in the motel. He didn’t eat much because he said everything tasted like ash. So he smoked instead.   
  
  James sat cross legged on the side of the motorcycle, attempting a clean, rubbing some polish on the rust spots and unscrewing the side panel of the cruiser to take a look at the battery. He researched the model back in his room in the Avengers tower and had an idea how the bike worked and what to pay attention to, as every bike was ever so fickle in its particularities. He’d brought a new battery with him as well.

  
“So,” Loki started as he put the styrofoam coffee cup next to James “Why is this trash bin in front of my door?”   
“I saw it and I took it from a scrap yard.” James shrugged. Loki made a vague sign with his coffee cup as to demand a bit more of an explanation. “I… I always liked motorcycles. I only used to ride some that Hydra gave me for the missions. But it was never for pleasure and besides, I was not myself while riding them anyway. I thought that, for once, I could have something that was mine.”   
“It’s not technically yours, you stole it.”   
“It was in a scrap yard, it belonged to no one. Now it belongs to me.”   
“As you say.” Loki did not push the issue any further, and just watched the comings and goings of the motel. Then he watched James work the bike and his attempts to start it after changing the battery. The motorcycle gave a huff, but nothing more. He grinned.

  
“You do not seem dissatisfied with the fact it’s not working.”   
“It’s not supposed to just work like that, that’s the whole point of reviving a bike: learning what makes her tick.”   
“ _Her_ .”   
James looked at him, hands already filled with dirt and grease:   
“Bike’s always a ‘ _she’_ .”   
“I had a lot of crash courses in humanity in the past months while I had to adjust to this shit life, but there’s still so much I won’t ever understand. It’s an inanimate object.”   
“Not for long.” James still kept his grin “You’ll ride with me and you’ll see.”   
“Can’t wait.” Loki said. He sounded anything but excited.

  
  James stopped working on the bike when evening fell. He needed a lot of spare parts anyway. Loki came and went at various intervals, allowing him to work in silence and only interjected to ask him if he wants a sandwich, to which James said no, then asked him if he wants a beer and he said no then Loki asked him if he wants a fucking fight and James laughed and took a break. 

  
They found themselves hanging off the chaise lounges again, as they often did, besides the dirty pool. Only a few lights were on in the motel and in the distance, someone was watching an old western with the windows open.    
The whirring of the air conditioning was buzzing from every side.   
Loki took out his Marlboro pack and let out a sigh before lighting the cigarette. James was surprised to see Loki handing it in his direction.   
“It’s the last one, I didn’t realize.” he said.    
James took it after a moment’s hesitation, and touched the same wet spot where Loki’s mouth had been moments before. His thoughts caught up with him wondering how Loki’s mouth tasted, and he silenced them at once.    
“Do they track you everywhere now?”   
“Yeah.” James replied, exhaling the answer along with a trail of smoke. The neon lights from the motel sign flashed across Loki’s face as he received the cigarette back from him.    
“Do they know you come where I am?”   
“No idea.” he shrugged “ I don’t give a shit.”   
“Oh, the rebel you are...”   
“It’s not that. It’s… everything is fractured. I don’t belong there and Steve is trying to make me think that I do. My road is not their road.”   
“What is their road?”   
“What is yours?” he turned and looked Loki dead in the eye and Loki’s face went on the defensive for just a second. His long drag from the cigarette made his face light up with the embers, as tiny particles of ash danced in front of his eyes before disappearing in the evening breeze. 

  
It had been just a moment but James committed it to memory because it looked like a painting, like Loki had conjured up a spark from the heavens and appeared to him in raw form, undone and dangerous.   
“Perdition, I am guessing.” Loki answered, exhaling smoke.   
“ _Ominous_.”  
Loki laughed. It was dry and only half amused, but James liked the way the corners of his lips curled up, forming just the idea of the future lines that will mark his face as he'd age. Even decades from then on, Loki would have a certain grace, a royal type of grace, etched into his features, no matter how many wrinklets would set across his face.Loki’s laughs were enticing and his face slipped into a softness you wouldn’t think it capable of otherwise. His smiles were usually dual edged, but when he laughed, the sense of underlying danger was gone. 

“This is it, James.” Loki spread his arms as to encapsulate the motel and everything around it “This is my kingdom. Filled with twenty dollar hookers, junkies, single mothers who suckle at their cheap booze every evening to drown a sorrow or two, old woman Doreen at the reception, who day dreams of the times when she was the most popular girl in high school and an old man with a metal arm who fixes his scrap yard junk in front of my door.” he said, turning to James, leaning his head into his shoulder just a bit.  
“The old metal arm guy sounds like the most interesting person in the kingdom.”   
Loki’s mouth twitched, but just a bit, and James saw him swallow his laugh with satisfaction.   
“I put up with him.” was Loki’s reply as he looked away, lifting his leg on the chaise lounge and leaning his elbow on it as he took another drag from the cigarette.

  
  The sky was perfectly clear as they stood in silence and most of the lights in the rooms had died off. They’d gone without talking for longer before, and the silences had been comfortable, always. James wondered if it was because of all those nights when Loki was on the other side of the bars, unable to speak, or if they simply complemented each other naturally.    
It made him feel nice to think it was just them fitting together, somehow, strangely. 

  
They kept passing on the cigarette from one to another until James got up and went to the vending machine in the reception area and took out two more packs of Marlboro. He intended to leave both to Loki anyway.    
When he returned, he returned to their comfortable silence again, to the empty beer bottles by the chaise lounges, the overfilled ashtray, the tools he had brought with him.  

He put the packs on the rusty table between them and Loki lit one up as soon as he opened the pack within his reach. The way his long fingers handled the lighter and the cigarette in itself was a work of art, and James enjoyed watching him. He wanted to lit up Loki’s cigarettes for him, but did not have the courage yet. The idea of being in such close proximity to him brought chills down his spine. He’d replayed the moment he helped him up in his cell numerous times in his mind. He watched his hands intently, when he allowed himself to watch.   
The way his tendons moved on the back of his hands, the way his knuckles had turned from ivory to a slight brown as his mortal hands worked the work of the low income man, day, day out. He was so beautiful in his mortality.

He almost could have- No. Nothing. _Nothing_.

He looked away from Loki, set his eyes on the neons until they burned images in his eyes.

 

There was one window opened, and they could only hear the traffic in the distance, when a song started playing.   
Slow and deliberate, it was the kind of song one makes a striptease dance on, or one makes love on, or one smokes and drinks itself into oblivion. James turned only slightly in the direction of the song, as if he would have heard his name being called out.   
Loki followed his movement, his eyes searching, but he saw nothin “What is it, James?”   
“Nothing. It’s just- I know this song.”   
Loki frowned in the general direction of the sound but he could not hear like he used to. Without knowing the song, he wouldn’t really know how to fit the rhythm to the actual song, separated by the curtains and the traffic noise.

  
James saw Loki stand to attention, curious. So he reached to his hoodie, which he had thrown next to the chaise lounge and rummaged through the pockets. He took out an Ipod he’d been given by Natasha, filled with hundreds of songs she thought he should catch up on. He’d added more to the playlist as he discovered new music. 

  
It took him a few moments to find it and when he did, he handed the earphones to Loki “It’s this one.”

One cigarette between his index and middle finger, Loki took them with the tips of his fingers and put them in his ears, as James pressed play. He leaned back in the chair and waited for a comment, but the comment never came. It was minutes later that he realized the song must have ended at least once and was on repeat in Loki’s ears. James turned his head towards the other man slowly, and saw Loki with his eyes staring at an imaginary point into the red neon lights of the motel sign, cigarette burning itself out between his fingers, arm lazily draped over his knee. 

  
He knew better than to think the shimmers he saw in his eyes were tears, but did he, really?   
Beyond the open window, the same song was playing, over and over, just like it was in Loki’s ears and James watched him intently, with a feeling akin to a trance.    
Loki was serene. He was angry. He was at peace. He was in despair. James could not decide. A myriad of emotions were crossing his face and he was not even moving. Something inside him was burning, somewhere in the deep canyons of his soul and James would have killed someone willingly in that moment, without any trigger words, to find out what had made that flame come alive, and what it held  _within it._

  
 His chest was barely breathing for a while, but after a few moments, he let out a shaky sigh, and covered it with an absent, deep drag from the half burned cigarette. And James watched, unwilling to break the moment until Loki did it himself.    
But Loki did not, for a longer time than James had expected. He did not otherwise move or said a thing until he finished his cigarette and only then did he took out the ear buds, looked at them like he was expecting something to happen and when it didn’t, he handed them back to James.    
And still, he did not speak.    
He just leaned back into the chaise lounge and watched the neons, as James watched him in return. The shimmers in Loki’s eyes had dried away.

  
“So…?” he softly asked.    
“Strange song.” Loki said, the first letters hoarse and unstable, as is the voice of one who had clenched his jaw and neck to keep tears back from flooding. James felt a rush of warmth, of a need to protect, a need to embrace. But Loki’s defenses stung, and they pinched him with their sharp needles even at a distance.    
“Why was it strange?”   
“Strange.” Loki repeated and he put an arm over his eyes for a moment, prolonging the continuation he left hanging in the air “I could not tell if it was a love song or a song about hate, or a song about despair. Even if it has the word ‘love’ in its lyrics.”   
“You sound like you think love is just one thing.”   
“Is it not?”   
“It’s all those things together,  _I think_ .”   
“I would not know.” Loki said, with a sigh.   
“Come again?”   
“Please don’t ask me such questions. I  **_cannot stand_ ** them.” Loki cut him off, his teeth clenched on the back of his mouth, stressing on the words. 

  
James took a swig from his bottle and settled in his seat more comfortably:   
“Frankly, I don’t give a shit what you can or cannot stand, Loki. Would be nice to have a conversation with you where you are not a self deprecating, arrogant, commanding piece of shit.”   
Loki turned his head sharply in his direction, and James braced, but didn’t do anything else much, just stared him down calmly, with a composed look on his face that could have rivaled the stillness of the night itself.    
He wanted to fight. He wanted to push and shove. He wanted to make things move, he wanted to bite, to kiss, to hold, to embrace. He was scared of it all, and he had no one to speak of it with. It boiled under his skin and scratched behind his eyes and the hidden recesses of his heart.    
He wanted to chew it out and vomit all of it, that’s how much it overwhelmed him.   
“No one called for you here, James Buchanan Barnes. Don’t forget that  **you**  came to  **_me_ ** .” Loki spat, venom at the tip of his tongue.   
“And you never told me to leave.”   
“I have, numerous times.”   
“Then why the fuck are we still here, in the same spot as every time after you told me to leave?”   
“Because you can’t get a fucking hint.”   
“Perhaps you don’t know how to give a fucking hint.”

 Loki was at him before James even realized what was happening.  
Thinner, infinitely more fragile than he used to be, Loki’s first target had been his throat, and he lunged for it fast enough to wrap his fingers around James’ neck and squeeze, his fingernails digging into the skin. James could crush him, he knew exactly what to do. He could crush him and break him in a hundred ways, if he wanted to.

But the last thing he thought about was hurting him. 

James propped his forearm under Loki’s neck as well, pushing his elbow into his jugular and adam’s apple, whichever spot it would hit first and Loki let out a choked cough, but did not relent, even as James pushed harder and harder, creating distance, making Loki lose his grip inch by inch. He pushed Loki off him with ease after the grip of his fingers loosened. Loki fell backwards, stumbling, and he lost his balance for a moment, feet tangling in the chaise lounge and James’ hoodie on the ground.

He almost fell backwards into the pool but James reached out, grabbed his arm and caught him just in time. Loki shoved him hard in the chest with his palm and it only made James lose balance for just a second.   
In the background, the same song was playing from the anonymous motel room.    
Whose pain was greater, he wondered, the pain of a fallen God or the one of a soldier of death?

  James was still holding on to Loki’s upper arm with his metal one, and he put his hand on the other, without squeezing, without grasping too hard. Loki was getting his breathing back to normal and his eyes were boring a hole through James’ chest for a while, before he finally looked up, face and green eyes framed by black wavy locks of hair in disarray. The neon danced across his hair in shimmers of red, white and blue. 

  
James did not know what to read on that face but he himself was overcome with a burden of a feeling he could not quite name and Loki was loose under his fingers, muscles relaxing. Loki took a step forward, distancing himself from the edge of the pool and the song kept playing and playing and  _playing_  and James took the step from Loki’s feet and cut the short distance between them and held him to his chest, his arms sliding away from Loki’s all the way to his shoulders and then slipping across his back. 

  
James felt all of him, sharp edges and the scent of cigarette smoke in his dark hair and for one moment when time stood still, he also felt Loki’s hands touching his back with fingertips as light as air.    
Before he could bury his face in that hair, before he could open his mouth to say a thing, before he could hold him tighter, Loki tugged at his t-shirt and his body went stiff, pulling away, and James let him.

  
His face looked a lot like it did when he was listening to the song on James’ Ipod, a mask of many things James could not quite trace, but he looked him in the eyes with that face regardless.   
“Go away, James. For both our sakes, just  **_leave_ ** .” Loki said. He pushed him away and shoved his shoulder into him as he walked past in a rush.    
He took the jacket he’d thrown on the ground in a haste and walked away without another word.

  
 James stood there, his chest, his hands, his shoulders, his back still echoing with the ghost of Loki’s body and he felt angry and stupid but also mellow and sad and warm.    
It was not where he intended to be.    
It was not how he intended to walk this road.    
But also, the road had met some unexpected stops and each stop had brought him closer towards an avalanche of feelings he had not anticipated and now he was standing in front of them unarmed and unprepared. 

  
He wanted to bite something to the blood. He wanted to destroy things. Embrace things, put his mouth on another mouth and lose his senses. 

  
The god damn song was still playing and he could feel his own heart sway in the rhythm with it.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
  

 

  When Loki opened the door the next morning to half sleepwalk towards the vending machine, he found two packs of Marlboro propped next to it. One opened, the other one still in its plastic wrap. In the opened one, James’ Ipod had been ungraciously shoved.   
His motorcycle was still in the parking spot in front of his door.    
Loki’s long fingers reached for the packs and pulled out the Ipod.

  
  When he returned with the coffee to his room, he lit up a cigarette and looked at the Ipod laying on the nightstand as if it were an animal that might or might not bite him. Eventually, he sat down on the floor, his back into the bed frame. The styrofoam cup of coffee sat between him and the ashtray on the floor. 

  
He put the ear buds in his ears and pressed play and the song started to play from the middle, where he’d stopped it the night before, and it was as if nothing had changed inside him. Like everything he felt the night before had just been asleep and was awakened by the song. And yet, he could not bring himself to stop it, or skip to the next song. 

  
With the cigarette between his fingers, he brought a hand to his mouth to push back the noise inside his throat, covered his face with fingers splayed over his eyes as if he could push all of it back, back from whatever forsaken place inside him all of this was coming from. He pushed his hands into his eyes until he saw white spots and felt pain.

It was not working.  
It was the opposite of working as he felt the hot flush of tears cross his cheeks and he held it all inside until his breath came out in gasps and he cried with such horrible sounds he barely thought of himself as human, or God, at all.

 


End file.
